First up this week is Guitar Hero World Tour (aka: the inferior version of Rock Band 2) for all home platforms. I only highlighted it because Guitar Hero is popular and this is the latest installment, but we all know Rock Band 2 is the better deal with 20 free downloadable songs, cheaper DLC, and backwards compatiblity with all your old DLC and disc-based Rock Band 1 tracks. Why anyone would want to buy World Tour for reasons other than the create a song mode is beyond me, but suit yourself.

Next is Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 for Windows. As you may now, Red Alert is a side series to the popular Command and Conquer real time strategy games. This new installment features a fully co-op playable campaign along with the signature Red Alert style fans have come to know and love (yes, it still has cheesy FMV cutscenes). Never play Red Alert before? Then check out TraderJake's article from two months ago which will point you to EA's website where you can download the first game for free, legally. Not a PC gamer? Wait a few weeks for the release of Red Alert 3 on the Xbox 360.

A game flying low on the radar for most folks is NinjaTown for the Nintendo DS. What the hell is NinjaTown? It's a tower defense game in which you place different types of ninjas around a city to stop the waves of attacking enemies. It's a pretty simple concept, but like other games of the genre, such as PixelJunk Monsters on the PS3, I'm sure it will get insanely difficulty to manage all the towers at once. Want to find out more about the game? Check out this interview from the 1UP Show.

Looking through the release list you may have noticed I highlighted Nerf N-Strike for the Wii. Yes, at first glance this may be another shovelware game, but it truly is not. The game itself looks quite fun, but the cool part here is that it comes with the greatest Wii Remote attachment EVER! What you see on the right is the Nerf N-Strike gun. Not only is it a Wiimote attachment, it's also a fully-functional Nerf gun! I don't know if it's worth the $60 asking price, but it's definitely one to keep an eye out for in the future when the price drops down to $30 or $20. Head over to MTV Multplayer to see the trailer (video not viewable in all countries) and read an interview with EA's Jon Dean about the game.

One of the big titles this week is the follow-up to the fantastic off-road racer Motorstorm, entitled Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. The new installment brings a new island locale along with 16 tracks, 7 vehicle classes, 4 player offline, 16 player online, and, of course, trophy support. Already the game has way more content than the barebones first entry. Based on the demo, Evolution Studios has surpassed the first game in track design, graphics, and controls. In addition, it doesn't feel rushed like the first game was. As you may remember, the original was slated to come out as a launch title but got delayed a few months. However, I'm still not sold on the game being worth $60 when you can get Burnout Paradise, which will be supported by Criterion/EA with free DLC well into next year, for only $30.

But, shining like a bright, happy sun over the entire gaming industry is my pick for game of the year, LittleBigPlanet, exclusively on PlayStation 3. In case you've been living under a rock, LBP is a platformer unlike any other game you've ever played before. The game's motto is Play. Create. Share. You can play the included story mode levels and levels created by other "happy gadders", all of which are made using the tools available to you in Create mode. Create will allow you to build anything you can dream of and Share it with the entire world. Some examples of levels I've seen in the recent Beta are traditional platformer style levels, levels that play a song, shooters, races, fun vehicles to mess around with, puzzles, remakes of other games, and even a calculator. As a concept, it's very ambitious, but the game itself is actually blast to play alone and with others. I guarantee that this will be a game you will be playing for a very long time to come, especially if the community becomes as tight-knit as I think it will be. So, congratulations to Alex Evans, Mark Healey, and the rest of the team at Media Molecule on the completion of your first game, and we will all be looking forward to what you decide to do next.

@Wolfman Walt: It's amazing how forgetting the word "by" makes a sentence so much more retarded. This is why I'm not allowed to post before bed time anymore. That and the time I turned RFG into an internet hate machine, but we don't talk about that.

The thing about LBP and why it has so much buzz around it is that nothing like it has ever really been attempted before. It's really the first game to make a YouTube like social network into a game and provide all the tools necessary to build the same levels the developers made. Sure, there's been level editors before, but none with this much power and ease of use.

Also, you mean Confrontation? I was in the Beta for that...and it seemed good. I'm not huge into that kind of game, but it seemed like it would be good if you like that kind of thing. However, I do know that the game's servers have been awful.

@Tynstar: I am not really hyped about LBP either. After reading the article and comments it sounds more interesting, but still not much more. The way I understand it, it's an easy-to-use game engine to build whatever you want. That sounds too generic. Also: remember how Spore was overhyped, and what it turned out to be?

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